A Carrion Death & The 2nd Death of Goodluck Tinubu

by Michael Stanley

  “This was a very difficult case—very embarrassing for everyone concerned, not to mention the country. And, to be frank, we didn’t exactly cover ourselves in glory. Dianna Hofmeyr is dead, a victim of her own creature—the red-bearded monster. We have the Angola police scouring their country for him, Interpol has distributed his picture and fingerprints worldwide, and if he sets foot in Botswana, we’ll have him at once! But right now there is no sign of him. He’s hiding out in the bush somewhere or sneaking through Africa’s porous borders. But we’ll get him sooner or later.

  “Anyway, everyone pulled together and worked hard. I appreciate that, so drink a toast to Kubu and Ian!” If this goes on much longer, Kubu thought as the others raised their glasses once again, everyone will be plastered before the main course.

  “Finally,” Mabaku said, “I can’t let this moment go without a toast to our hosts. Joy and Kubu, thanks very much for your hospitality; and to Pleasant, for all the help I know she provided.” Once again, everyone made the appropriate noises and sipped their drink. Kubu stood up in case his boss decided not to finish and headed into the kitchen to get a bottle of wine. Joy followed with the soup plates.

  “He scares me when he stands up like that,” Kubu murmured to Joy. “You never know what he’s going to say. He could just as easily have ripped us all apart for not solving the case before all the suspects turned into dead bodies!”

  “I think he likes to put on a mean face sometimes. Underneath he’s a softie,” Joy replied.

  Kubu grunted. You don’t know him as well as I do, he thought to himself, and walked back into the dining room with a bottle of wine in each hand.

  The main course was roast kid, and everyone was impressed by this local delicacy. Joy had surpassed herself, keeping it moist and flavorful, and surrounded each helping with generous servings of vegetables. Nobody said much until the plates were clean, and the men had worked on seconds. Then, inevitably, the dinner conversation returned to the case they had been working on. Ian started the ball rolling.

  “Kubu, when I spoke to you early on in the case, you told me how Angus had used his new control of the Hofmeyr Trust to push the board into appointing his sister as head of BCMC. You told me how surprised you were. I confirmed that the first body you found was Angus, which you found before the board meeting. I understand these board meetings are rather dull and formal, but even so I would have expected them to notice that Angus was actually dead!”

  Kubu laughed. “When I first spoke to you, Ian, I didn’t mention that Angus did not attend in person, but via telephone conference call. We now know that someone was impersonating Angus, mimicking his voice almost perfectly. Also, a speech he made was probably prerecorded. The South African police found a tape recorder at the Hofmeyr house in South Africa. Jason Ferraz checked into the rehab place near George, pretending to be Angus, and the call to the board meeting came from there.

  “At first I thought that Ferraz was doing the mimicry too. But that was Dianna! It turns out that she had a natural talent for it; she used to imitate her brothers as a child. Cecil Hofmeyr’s PA told me that during the board meeting, Dianna left, ostensibly to take a call from her mother. Our colleagues in South Africa later confirmed that the call actually came from Ferraz at the rehab. Dianna was patched into the board meeting via that call. Some of what were thought to be Angus’s contributions were recordings, and some were actually Dianna imitating his voice live. Probably she also made the recordings.

  “She was really good at it. She would answer Angus’s mobile phone too, and she fooled her mother, as well as several other people, including me.”

  Mabaku joined the discussion. “Kubu’s real breakthrough was understanding the connection between Dianna and the mysterious Angolan causing the mayhem. Dianna Hofmeyr repeatedly called out the name Daniel after she’d been hit by the car. We thought that Daniel may have been the name, or pseudonym, of the red-bearded creature. But Cecil Hofmeyr told me that the Angolan had accused him of being Daniel and of trying to renege on the payment for killing Angus. So Red Beard couldn’t be Daniel.”

  Kubu took over again. “The breakthrough in my thinking came at Dianna’s funeral. Next to Roland Hofmeyr’s gravestone was a smaller one—for Daniel Hofmeyr. That jogged my memory. Daniel was the youngest of the Hofmeyr children. He was killed by a leopard when he was nine, but in strange circumstances. I’m sure now that Dianna used him as another persona to interact with Red Beard—like a Chinese wall. Daniel and Dianna were one and the same person all along.”

  “Good God,” exclaimed Ian. “But why did she do all this? She had plenty of money of her own.”

  “That’s a puzzle,” Kubu said. “I wish I knew whether she was just a calculating psychopath, or there was more to it than that.”

  Mabaku harrumphed. “I don’t put too much stock in the insanity defense. Too many times it’s the only way out. I assume that everyone is sane unless very compelling evidence is produced to the contrary. I haven’t heard a shred of evidence from her past behavior that she was crazy. What do you think, Ian?”

  “Lady Macbeth is my yardstick!” He nodded at Mabaku. “Just look at how Dianna planned everything—Angus’s murder, the recording at the board meeting, the mythical Daniel—it was premeditated. She really stuck it to Cecil, who’d built up the empire for Angus and her. Such ingratitude! She must’ve hated him. For motive, it’s always power, money, or sex. It must’ve been the first, since she had plenty of the others! Insane? Not on your Nellie!”

  “How can a sane person be so ruthless?” Joy said. “Especially a woman. To murder her brother and deliberately cause all that violence means she was sick in her head. No normal person could do that! I wonder what made her that way.”

  “My dear Joy,” Ian said with feigned sympathy in his voice, “just remember that the only normal people are those you don’t know well!” The group burst out laughing. “Not original, unfortunately. I read it somewhere. True, though.”

  “I didn’t know her very well when I was at school,” Kubu interjected. “But I remember that she and Angus had a strained relationship. She seemed to resent all his successes, particularly because they were so lauded by their father. She complained that anything she did well was ignored. Angus told me on several occasions she also despised her mother for not standing up to her father. She thought a woman should be equal to a man. And as strong.”

  “And as ruthless,” chimed in Pleasant. “I wonder if she actually knew what she was doing. Isn’t it possible, Ian, for someone to have several personalities which don’t know what the others are doing? I mean, she must have been more or less normal most of the time to have been as successful as she was—in her studies and so on.”

  “I don’t cut up people’s minds, Pleasant. Just their brains. There is nothing left in the brains when I get to them. No thoughts, no ideas, no emotions. Nothing. Just dead meat.”

  “Oh, Ian!” Joy interjected. “Not at dinner, please.”

  Mabaku shifted his chair a little and said, “You are thinking of classical schizophrenia, Pleasant? Multiple personalities and all that? Dianna one minute, Daniel the next? The thing is, those different persona are always in conflict with each other. That’s the whole point. They don’t cooperate to carry out a plan.”

  He paused, and then continued, “I’m really sorry we didn’t have the chance to interrogate her. I’m not sure we’d have won a court battle, especially with the legal talent she could have hired. But we might have learned why all these people died.”

  Strangely, it was the retiring Bongani who had the last word.

  “The witch doctor said there were three, and then there was one. Almost as though the three Hofmeyrs were absorbed into something else completely. Something evil. Or something insane.”

  The group lapsed into silence, each lost in uncomfortable thoughts of madness and possession.

  After dinner, the mood lightened, and the party continued with convivial conversation. An hour later, Joy serve
d coffee and deliciously light wafer biscuits she had baked herself. After the guests had eaten the last of these, Pleasant and Bongani decided to leave at the same time. As Pleasant kissed Joy good-bye, she winked and whispered, “Progress! We’re going to the Grand Palm for some more coffee.” Joy squealed with delight and pinched Pleasant’s arm affectionately. “Have fun. But be careful,” she said with a glint in her eye. Kubu admonished them to drive carefully, with a joke about the police being ready with a roadblock. Ilia barked her encouragement.

  Back on the veranda, Joy and Kubu found Ian and Mabaku nursing glasses of Scotch, and Marie a glass of red wine. “Topped up everyone’s glasses. Hope you don’t mind?” Ian said.

  “Of course not,” Kubu replied. “I’ll go and get one for myself. A glass of wine for you, my dear?”

  “No, thanks. I must start clearing up.”

  Ian stood up and took Joy by the arm. “No, no. Come and sit down and relax. You’ve been working hard this evening, lassie. Time to put your feet up. Kubu, get her some wine, or even better, a Scotch.”

  “No, no,” Joy protested. “Wine is strong enough for me. I don’t want a hangover in the morning.”

  When Kubu returned with the drinks, the five relaxed and gossiped about Pleasant and Bongani.

  “I am not sure Bongani has any idea that he’s being reeled in,” Ian said with a smile. “Perhaps I’ll have to take him to lunch and educate him about the wiles of women.” He raised his glass. “A toast! To young love!” No one had the energy to stand up, so they just raised their glasses and drank.

  For the next few minutes, everyone enjoyed a convivial silence, all lost in their own thoughts. Kubu wondered whether the others were wistfully recollecting young loves, or whether, like him, they were merely content to enjoy the moment without much thought.

  Mabaku broke the silence by standing up and walking over to the table, where Kubu had thoughtfully put a bottle of Scotch. He poured a generous helping.

  “What a mess this case has been,” he said, more to himself than to the others. “Seven people dead, and nothing to show for it. The only suspect we had in our hands kills a cop and escapes across the border. I doubt if the Angolans will ever find and extradite him. What a fiasco.”

  Mabaku walked over to the steps and gazed out into the darkness. Eventually he turned and said, “There are still loose ends. For example, for the life of me, I can’t work out why the letter Cecil Hofmeyr got from Frankental caused so much trouble. Just think of it. It caused a break-in at BCMC; it probably caused the deaths of Frankental, Kobedi, and the hit man from Angola. Cecil was willing to pay thousands of pula to retrieve it, and yet it had nothing of real importance in it.”

  “What letter was this?” Ian asked. “I didn’t hear about it.”

  Kubu replied, “It was a letter Frankental sent to Cecil Hofmeyr. I agree with the director. I’ve no idea why the letter was such an issue. Some negative comments about the mine manager Ferraz—which I strongly suspect were entirely justified—and a suggestion that some of the best diamonds were being stolen. But the response should have been an investigation, not bribery, blackmail, and murder!”

  “Do you have a copy of the letter here?” Ian asked him. Kubu rubbed his chin, feeling the roughness of the lengthening night. “I think I have a copy in my briefcase. I took it down to the mine in case I wanted to confront Jason, and I haven’t taken it out.” He stood, pottered around in the spare bedroom, and came back waving the copy. “There you are, Ian. Let’s see what brilliant insights you have to offer, then!” Having parted with the letter, he went off to open another bottle of red wine. He was thankful the other men were into hard tack, leaving him to enjoy something really decent in peace.

  Ian fished in his pocket and took out his pipe. He then extracted a small tin of tobacco and stuffed some into the bowl, prodding it firmly down with his little finger. As much as she liked Ian, Joy was upset at the idea of pipe smoke. But Ian made no move to light it; he merely put the stem of the pipe in his mouth and sucked contentedly as he started carefully reading the three typed pages of Aron Frankental’s letter.

  While Ian read, Marie asked Joy how Kubu had held up under the growing number of unsolved murders. Joy pursed her lips. “As time passed, he got more and more tense. He was still very attentive to me—that’s the way he is—but I can tell that he’s stressed when he stops singing. He loves to sing, mainly opera. Yes, opera,” she repeated in response to Marie’s raised eyebrows. “He thinks he’s great, but he’s really only enthusiastic. But I haven’t heard him sing for weeks.”

  “Mabaku is the same. He doesn’t talk about his stress or the problems at work. He just goes into the garden and digs holes for new plants. Normally it’s like pulling teeth to get him to do anything.”

  Both women laughed at the foibles of men.

  At last Ian put down the letter, and everyone’s attention turned to him. “It’s written in a very scholarly fashion,” he began. “One of the things about a German education is that there is no compromise. A scientist must be trained as a real scientist, not as a technician. Used to be that way in Scotland too. His English is a bit rough here and there, and perhaps that gives the impression that his analyses are rough also. But that’s certainly not the case. I know very little about geology, but it seems that he’s carefully identified each possible hypothesis and broken it down and analyzed it. So when he comes to the more contentious stuff on the last page, all the obvious alternatives have already been dealt with. Impressive.” He nodded in admiration.

  “Yes,” said Mabaku. “You’re also a pretty careful scientific chap, so I’ll take your word for it, but that brings us no further. Why all the fuss about it?”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” said Ian, enjoying the limelight. He took a few sucks on the cold briar.

  “Well?” asked Kubu. He would be annoyed with himself if he had missed something.

  “It’s the wording,” said Ian at last. “Kubu, you said that ‘some of the best diamonds were being stolen.’ But that’s not what he wrote. It’s here right at the end: ‘Perhaps some of the best quality diamonds are actually stolen.’ He meant to write that the best quality diamonds are actually being stolen, but left out the participle. The German sentence construction is different. If you know the context, as we do, you come to the right interpretation, which is that he wants to alert Cecil Hofmeyr that someone—and he is suggesting Jason—is stealing diamonds from the mine. But Jason, seeing this letter cold and knowing that the mine was being salted, would think Aron had found that out and was telling Cecil that the diamonds used to salt the mine had been stolen. From some mine in Angola, for example? Jason would have thought his scam had been discovered. I don’t know how he came to know about the letter—perhaps Aron kept a copy—but he couldn’t afford to have it floating around.”

  Kubu was impressed. “But why was Cecil so concerned?” he asked. This time Mabaku answered. “Originally we thought Maboane was a BCMC mine—Cecil even told us that. But it wasn’t. Cecil had his own money in it. It wasn’t BCMC’s at all. He knew Ferraz wouldn’t steal the diamonds because he was a significant stakeholder himself, so he may have interpreted the letter the other way too. I think we’ll find, if we look into Cecil’s finances a lot more closely—which we will—that he had a lot to lose if the mine went down. And he needed that letter for leverage with Jason. That, and keeping it private, was easily worth a few thousand pula to him. But Kobedi got greedy. He thought Red Beard and Jason just wanted to know what was in the letter. So he thought he could get away with selling them a high-quality color copy. That was a mistake. A fatal mistake, as it turned out.” He swallowed the rest of his whisky. His face became grim. “I think we’ll take a careful look at Mr. Hofmeyr’s affairs over the next few weeks.”

  Kubu shook his head. “So Aron’s false deduction about Jason was twisted into the truth by the way he incorrectly wrote the English! And we were too smart to see it at the time. But probably Cecil and Jason did see it. Tha
t missing word indirectly may have killed Kobedi and Sculo, as well as Aron, and nearly killed me! Words can be more important than we might think!”

  Ian nodded, took the pipe out of his mouth by the bowl, and pointed to Kubu with the stem. “Don’t forget that, young David. There isn’t anything more important than the right words!”

  Epilogue

  PAINTED DEVIL

  The sleeping and the dead,

  Are but as pictures; ’tis the eye of childhood

  That fears the painted devil.

  —SHAKESPEARE, MACBETH, ACT 2, SCENE 2

  May

  Kubu sat in the waiting room, wondering why he couldn’t let go of the Hofmeyr case. Everyone else seemed to have returned to a normal life. Bongani was relaxed, no longer haunted by the witch doctor, and getting on well with Pleasant. Mabaku was back to his usual grumpy self, keeping his distance from the commissioner, and closing in on Cecil; Ian was waiting for his next dead body.

  Mabaku had insisted that the Maboane mine use a bulldozer to move the recent tailings at the mine dump. It had only taken a couple of days of careful work to unearth Aron’s decomposed body. The autopsy showed that he had been shot with the same gun that had killed Sculo. The remains had then been transported to Germany to the Frankentals, who now had closure and could start to heal.

  Only Kubu remained frustrated by the need to understand what had happened to the young Hofmeyrs. Once he put his mind to it, it hadn’t taken him long to locate the psychologist who had treated Dianna so many years before. I’m fortunate, he thought, to live in Gaborone and not in a similar-size city in America. I would never have been able to contact all the shrinks there.

  After a short wait, the receptionist ushered Kubu into the inner office, where comfortable chairs and ordinary couches were strewn below colorful abstract paintings. In one corner stood a cluttered desk with a formal but empty desk chair. A friendly, elderly lady was sitting relaxed in an armchair, whose upholstery depicted Little Red Riding Hood patting a friendly wolf.